THE ORIGINAL PUNTER’S PAL
HE WAS RESPECTED and feared by his sport in equal measure, but Claude Duval was, in many respects, an accidental racing reporter.
When media tycoon Rupert Murdoch launched Duval was headhunted for his knowledge of cricket. “Off spin, eh?” said the legendary sports editor Frank Nicklin. “You’re in...”
On the books when Britain’s new red-top tabloid was published on November 17, 1969, Duval, then 24, was the last of the originals, Murdoch aside, when he retired a year ago.
He only became racing writer when, after a boozy session in a Fleet Street hostelry, he was told to get an interview “with someone who’s never been interviewed before”. His scoop with the formidable ex-commando racing trainer Captain Ryan Price paid off.
Yet, while racing’s leading lights came to answer his calls with trepidation (his greatest scoop was being tipped off about Derby winner Mill Reef ’s career-ending leg injury in 1972), a constant was his love affair with Yorkshire. He might have witnessed the emotional wins of equine immortals like Red Rum, Aldaniti and Frankel, but nothing, says Duval, rivals home favourite and top weight Sea Pigeon’s win at York in the 1979 Ebor when injury-ravaged jockey Jonjo O’Neill was almost caught on the line by Donegal Prince.
“They started to announce the photo-finish result after an eternity. ‘First number one Sea...’” Duval told
“And you never heard anything else. These hardened Tykes, they were in tears and jumping up and down as if they had won the lottery. Jonjo had a broken foot, and when he went to see the doctor, he showed him the wrong foot. Forty seven years writing for that was the most memorable result. Yorkshiremen, they’re not terribly emotional, but they were on this day.
“And then there was the Great Habton farmer trainer Peter Easterby. Most journalists never had much joy with the busy Easterby – ‘Mek it quick’ he would say – but his nags-to-riches story was a real fairytale.”
Duval’s rapport with the grand old man of Yorkshire racing is one of many chronicled in his entertaining memoir
For, while a recurring theme is his admiration for self-made people, this reporter was a racing romantic at heart.
The most poignant chapter is reserved for jockey Bobby Beasley after the flawed Irishman fought chronic alcoholism before winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup, steeplechasing’s Holy Grail, on Captain Christy in 1974 some 15 years after his first win in the famous race.
Typically, it was Duval who tracked Beasley down to a hostelry in East Sussex where, ironically, the horseman worked as a publican in retirement. “I come down every morning and touch all the optics of spirits – the little b ******* ,” said Beasley before explaining how he won back his dignity on Captain Christy. “Once they ruled – and almost – destroyed my life. Not now. Booze was once my God, but now I am the master.”
Duval’s sentimentality masked a fierce determination for exclusives. His last was one of his most regrettable; namely that Yorkshire-based Paul Hanagan, an extremely likable twotime champion jockey, had lost his job with top owner Sheikh Hamdan al-Maktoum. Duval’s wife Fiona often wondered why it took her husband longer to return to their Kent home from nearby Folkestone racecourse than it did from Doncaster. Contacts, said the racing correspondent universally known as CD. And the occasional alcoholic beverage Though his 47-year winning run on
eclipsed his friend and great rival Sir Peter O’Sullevan’s stint on the
Duval dreaded the days on the way home when he passed a phone box occupied by the ‘voice of racing’. A sleepless night followed until he read the next day’s early editions, though every conversation between the pair ended with the words ‘be lucky’.
His book provides a vivid insight into Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper under uncompromising editor Kelvin MacKenzie. “Hand on heart, I enjoyed the challenge, the name of the game was exclusive stories,” said Duval.
“There’s a lot of what I call spoon-fed PR handouts today. I think it makes for lazy journalism. For me the Grand National was always my favourite meeting, because there was always a chance of a story and a little guy winning the greatest race of all.”
The legendary Red Rum’s third win in 1977 for car dealer Ginger McCain was a fairytale that provided great copy before the aforementioned Mackenzie haunted Duval five years later with these words: “Buy me a horse to win the Grand National.” On a budget of £15,000, Duval sourced a chaser – Blackwater Bridge – to be prepared by racing grandee Toby Balding (uncle of TV’s Clare). “Never heard of him,” barked MacKenzie. “There’s only one man who’ll train our horse Blackie, and that’s the great Ginger McCain.”
As Duval, christened the Punter’s Pal by MacKenzie long before lifelong friends Sir AP McCoy and Frankie Dettori assumed the mantle, smoothed the troubled waters with all concerned, he reveals how ‘luck money’ had to be paid to all and sundry to ensure
myriad wishes were met. A case of gin ensured the horse could be pictured galloping at Aintree, for example.
There’s a tragic postscript. At a prep race at Haydock, ‘Blackie’ suffered a serious leg injury. When it became clear the poor horse could not be saved, and Duval broke the news to an incandescent MacKenzie, he was told: “Save a bullet for your f ****** self.”
Yet had better luck in 1997 – the bomb scare National – when the Jenny Pitman-trained Nahthen Lad finished 11th for a lucky reader. The iron lady showed a heart of gold – a far cry from 1991 when Duval’s story about the form and fitness of her crocked horses, provocatively headlined ‘Jenny in the pits’, prompted one unforgettable phone exchange. “I tried to stall her by saying ‘Hold on for a minute – I’m putting my cats in another room. They’re not used to language like this’,” said Duval. “Finally Mrs P said ‘I am going to sue your ghastly little rag for every penny it’s got’. I replied ‘I suspect Jenny that, like most of the horses in your yard, you haven’t got a leg to stand on!’ Her phone crashed down and my cats came back to snuggle up on the settee.”
That said, Claude Duval believes all his enemies could fit into a phone box, Mrs P included. “I remember first night and Rupert Murdoch came and stood on a chair in the newsroom,” he recalled. “It never occurred to me that the paper would dominate like it did because everyone else on Fleet Street thought it would last a matter of months.” did last the course – just like the cricketer who bowled over racing for nearly five decades.
is published by Racing Post Books, price £20.